Too Aware? The Downside of Mindfulness Revealed

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"Mindfulness" is the watchword of gurus and lifestyle coaches
everywhere. But too much awareness could prevent the formation of
good habits, new research suggests.

People high in
mindfulness — a state of active attention to what's going on
in the present moment — are worse at automatic learning,
according to the study, which is being presented today (Nov. 12)
at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San
Diego. Automatic processes lead to the formation of habits — both
good and bad, said study researcher Chelsea Stillman, a doctoral
student in psychology at the Georgetown University Center for
Brain Plasticity and Recovery.

"Our theory is that one learns habits — good or bad — implicitly,
without thinking about them," Stillman said in a statement. "We
wanted to see if mindfulness impeded implicit learning."
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Stillman and her colleagues recruited adults and tested their
level of mindfulness. Next, each participant completed one of two
implicit learning tasks. Both tasks involved watching a series of
colored dots on a computer screen and responding when a certain
color showed up in a certain location. For example, they might be
shown a red dot on the left side of the screen, a red dot on the
right and then a green dot on the left — the last dot displayed
was their cue to press a button. Unbeknownst to the participants,
however, the green dot on the left side of the screen would
always show up two beats after the red dot on the left. If they
automatically caught on to this hidden warning, their reaction
times would be faster, indicating implicit learning.

The scores on these tests revealed that people who were less
mindful reacted more quickly. In other words, the less they were
actively engaged, the better they absorbed the patterns in the
tests.

"The very fact of paying too much attention or being too aware of
stimuli coming up in these tests might actually inhibit implicit
learning," Stillman said. "That suggests that mindfulness may
help prevent formation of automatic habits — which is done
through implicit learning — because a mindful person is aware of
what they are doing."

That inhibition of habit formation might prevent bad
habits from taking hold, but it could also prevent healthy
habits from forming. Still, other studies suggest that
cultivating peaceful, active attention has its benefits.
Meditation and mindfulness were shown to
improve depression symptoms in a 2010 study published in the
journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

And for explicit learning — the kind you have to work at
consciously — mindfulness may be helpful. A study published this
year in the journal Psychological Science showed that
mindfulness improved scores on the Graduate Record
Examination (GRE), the test taken to show readiness for graduate
school. Mindfulness training may prevent the mind from wandering
during test taking, the researchers suggested.